Reclamation (Best Laid Plans Book 4) (39 page)

“I don't think they'll be bringing those trucks anywhere near the cliff,” his dad said. “And we have to consider that the evacuated townspeople aren't too far away. We don't want to let enemy troops wander around freely and possibly discover them.”

“So we blow it now?” Mary asked.

His dad and uncle glanced at each other and nodded. “I've been waiting to see some fireworks,” his dad said with a slight smile.

“Let's give it a bit,” Lewis said. “We've got nothing to lose from waiting a bit longer, and a better opportunity might come up. If nothing else we might get a chance to take out some of those scouts.”

His dad looked down at the approaching soldiers, who were moving extremely cautiously and letting their dogs go well ahead of them. “I suppose it couldn't hurt,” he said with a shrug.

As they settled back to watching the canyon and valley below Lewis turned his binoculars to their shelter. Like with the raiders, he'd buried the entrance and they'd hidden anything they couldn't take with them in the escape tunnel, as well as locking the shed and covering it with a thin layer of dirt over the top. As far as he could see the blockheads hadn't found the place yet, but given how thoroughly they were scouring the area it was only a matter of time.

He had to admit that even though he'd willingly abandoned his home to escape the threat, the thought of enemy soldiers taking it over and using it for themselves seriously pissed him off. Although to be fair, since the shelter was so far from the rest of town and he knew every square inch of it there was a good chance he could severely punish them if they tried trespassing.

After a few minutes of watching the enemy below Lewis heard the noise of an approaching truck engine from behind. He turned to see the reinforcements Chauncey had promised, driving one of the raider trucks with the town's remaining M2 Browning mounted on the top.

Lewis hastily radioed Carl Raymond, who was driving the truck, to tell him to cut the engines, then turned to Uncle George, who'd been following the progress of the scouts with his scope. “Did they hear that?”

“Doesn't look like it,” his uncle replied.

Carl and Tam hopped out of the parked vehicle and continued on foot, joined by Wes and a dozen other defenders. That was probably the most they could scrape together on short notice; with the volunteers with Davis to the south, ten defenders a time on patrol in the nearby hills scouting for any Gold Bloc troops sneaking their way, and all the sentries and patrols taking shifts around the refuge itself, not to mention the people off duty taking what rest they could, the community's manpower was stretched a little thin.

That included Jane, who had spent the last 24 hours either sleeping or as one of those 10 on patrol. He missed his wife, especially now when it looked like there might be trouble soon.

“Have they come up the canyon?” Tam called as they got closer.

“They're sending scouts,” Lewis replied, “but even those are still tiptoeing around the mouth of the canyon.”

“I guess I wouldn't be in any hurry either if I had hundreds of thousands of friends behind me and ambushes in front,” Carl said. “They've got all the time in the world to feel us out before committing to anything.”

The group joined them, and the new arrivals looked down into the valley with the scopes or binoculars they'd brought, or if they hadn't then shared what was available among them.

After a few minutes Tam lowered her scope. “Hmm. Looks like they're setting up in town.”

Lewis nodded, eyes also on the vehicles moving to secure the ruined perimeter of the town while the rest of the convoy pulled into the center and parked wherever they could find a place.

“Seriously?” Mary asked. “They're going to set up in that dump?”

Wes glared at her. “Hey, that's our home you're talking about!”

Lewis's dad gave them both a long-suffering look. “They might just be camping there for the night, or they might be planning to use it as a more permanent base of operations. Either way it's too close for comfort. We should probably be cautious and call in to tell Catherine, see if she wants to move the townspeople farther into the mountains just in case.”

“And if they decide they want to be Aspen Hill's new residents?” Uncle George asked. “We were ready to destroy the road and maybe discourage any attempts to explore up the canyon on foot, but this is more than we can handle alone. We should radio Grimes and see what he wants to do about it.”

Lewis's dad frowned down the canyon. “Whatever we decide, I think it's about time we blew the road.” He hesitated for a moment, then carefully withdrew the detonator from his pocket and thumbed off the safety cap.

“Wait,” Lewis blurted, mind racing. Everyone turned to look at him, and he did his best to pull his thoughts together. “That road is the only way up the canyon.”

The others gave him blank looks. “Um yeah, that's the idea,” Mary said.

“But they're not the only ones with vehicles.”

There was another uncomfortable pause. “Please tell me you're just talking about keeping the way open if the military wants to bring people down for an attack,” his dad finally said.

“Them too, if they have anyone to spare. But we can do plenty by ourselves.” Lewis looked down at the cluster of intact buildings in the midst of the ruined town, where the enemy soldiers had begun to ferry things from the trucks while more set up a perimeter along the fortifications he'd helped build. “We defended that town for weeks against a determined enemy, and at the moment we're pretty well equipped. I've got a good idea of the sort of attacks they'll have trouble dealing with, and I know every square inch of the area.”

Uncle George shook his head emphatically. “No way, bud. We promised Williams we would hold this canyon. Nobody said anything about trying any heroics against professional soldiers. Besides, the longer we delay blowing the road the greater the risk they'll take it.”

Lewis did his best to hide his frustration. Didn't they see? “This is
our
road! We're the ones with the explosives set up to detonators. We can come and go as we please along it, and if they try to follow us they'll get buried under tons of rubble. That's a huge advantage, one we should use.”

Tam gave him an uncomfortable look. “Come on, Lewis. The town lost almost a hundred good people fighting the raiders, and what we'd be facing down there is a hundred times worse. This isn't our fight. Let the military handle it while we worry about our own survival.”

“It'll be our fight if the military fails and we find ourselves surrounded by blockheads we can't do anything to defend ourselves against,” Lewis shot back. “Every small victory means we're that much closer to ending the war for good.”

Almost everyone stared at him doubtfully, although Wes was nodding in agreement. Hardly the best recommendation. He hurried to continue. “This is
our
town we're defending. Our terrain, our opportunity to make a difference. At least give me a chance to see if I can round up some volunteers.”

George and his dad looked at each other, then his uncle sighed. “He's right about one thing, that for the moment the road offers options we shouldn't be in a hurry to eliminate. We can always sit on the detonator for a while. Who knows, they might slip up and send a vehicle up the canyon after all and we can do some damage.”

“What about the scouts?” Mary asked. “They're going to actually head up the canyon at some point.”

“It would be a good idea to take them out if we can,” Lewis replied. He turned and looked thoughtfully at the truck.

“No,” Tam immediately said. “We're not sending the truck roaring down the canyon, firing blindly at trained soldiers that'll have heard us coming from miles away and set up to punch us full of holes the moment we're in range.”

“Just hear me out,” Lewis said.

His family and the defenders exchanged looks. But he
was
in charge of the defenses. And he liked to think he'd had enough good ideas that they'd be willing to give him a chance.

Nobody spoke up, so Lewis outlined his plan.

* * * * *

It took almost an hour for the scouts to move half a mile up the canyon. They'd stuck to the part with gentle slopes, far from any sign of cliffs or steep rocky inclines, and they continued to send their dogs out a hundred yards or more ahead at all times, sniffing for whatever they'd been trained to sniff for and ears pricked for danger.

The enemy was moving slow, but they
were
moving. Eventually even at their pace they'd make their way to someplace they could be a nuisance.

Lewis didn't intend to give them that chance.

The first step had been greasing the truck's axles as best they could to prevent any squeaking. The vehicle had been well maintained to begin with so it didn't make much noise, but even so they hadn't taken any chances.

Then, forty-five minutes ago, him, Tam, Carl, and Wes had coasted the truck down the canyon to the spot Lewis had carefully picked out. It was hidden out of sight from below by a thick stand of trees and a bend in the road, and well out of earshot of the scouts at the time.

Once in place they'd waited patiently while the scouts made their painstaking way to them, with his dad, Mary, Uncle George, and the other defenders up above keeping tabs on the enemy movements and relaying that information to them.

The idea was to let the blockheads reach a gently sloping meadow just around the bend from where the truck waited. There was no way up the canyon aside from crossing that open expanse, and they hoped that eventually the enemy would take the chance.

At which point the truck would coast the rest of the way to the bend and park at a ledge that overlooked the meadow.

“Now,” his dad whispered over the radio, the signal they'd been waiting for.

In the driver's seat Tam released the brakes, while along the back bumper Wes and Carl began pushing hard. With barely a squeak the vehicle started coasting down the road, slowly picking up speed.

Heart thudding beneath his body armor, Lewis checked the M2 one last time to make sure everything looked good. He'd oiled the mechanisms with the special lubricant before they'd set out, and he'd also made sure the belt-fed ammo looked clean and didn't have any visible flaws that might cause jams. Having the weapon jam on him while he was in the sights of dozens of blockheads would be a bad thing.

The truck reached the bend, and Lewis spun the heavy machine gun on its mount to point at the meadow and hunkered down behind it. Down below he heard dogs begin baying their presence. “They know you're there,” his dad warned, unnecessarily.

The meadow came into view around the bend, two dozen enemy soldiers ranged halfway across it in a cautious formation, completely exposed and far from the trees below or the ridge above. With the truck moving nearly silently he heard he heard the warning shouts, saw some of the scouts drop to the ground, a few turn to run, and the rest raise their weapons to fire.

Lewis fired first.

He'd never shot the M2 Browning before, and without doing so there were few ways to adequately prepare himself for the experience. Even sturdily mounted to the truck the recoil was incredible, vibrating the gun almost painfully in his grip; compared to it his reliable G3 was a pop gun. Wearing his noise-canceling earphones it sounded like nothing so much as the world's largest woodpecker, but without them the volume would've been close to deafening.

It took him a moment to get control of the weapon, and then he sent the line of bullets walking across the meadow in a zigzag to hit every blockhead he could see.

He'd watched this machine gun chew through brick walls when Turner used it against them, and what it had done to the townspeople unlucky enough to be caught in the open still haunted his memories. So even given that he was shooting at enemies in standard issue body armor, overkill didn't begin to describe it. He did his best to avoid seeing the aftermath.

The truck roared to life beneath him, and even as he finished his first sweep and ran the line of bullets back across the meadow, towards any enemy that was still moving, Tam slammed them into reverse along the road and back around the safety of the bend. Lewis had stopped firing not long after the vehicle started moving, when aiming became too difficult, and at that point he dropped down into the bed of the truck to avoid any enemy return fire.

If there were any enemies left.

He stayed that way until he heard the slam of the passenger's side door as Carl and Wes piled into the cab, then cautiously stood to a crouch. Tam was pulling them around in a three-point turn, and he soon had a view of the road behind them as they roared back up the canyon towards safety.

There wasn't much to see back there, since the scouts hadn't gotten past the meadow and nobody else was around. More useful was the constant stream of information his dad fed him over the radio. The upshot of which being that if anyone had survived back there, they weren't taking the chance of moving just yet.

“What about the blockheads down in the valley?” he asked. “Are they giving chase?”

There was a long pause. “No,” Uncle George replied. “I've been watching them. The pattern of the vehicles patrolling around the town changed after you hit the scouts, but none of them are heading towards the canyon. They must still be wary of traps. Probably even more so, now.”

Lewis nodded and settled down on his back in the truck bed, staring up at the sky above and the sun overhead. Still midafternoon, but it felt like the day should be almost over. He didn't want to think about what had happened back there. Maybe there was still time to find Jane on her patrol and join her. That's where he should be anyway.

“Is everyone okay?” his dad asked.

He listened as Tam replied that she, Carl, and Wes were just fine, then lifted his radio. “I'm unhurt.”

There was a long pause before his dad responded. “Good job, everyone. I don't think the blockheads will be sending anyone else up the canyon any time soon.”

Lewis lay clutching the radio, feeling the vibration of the truck beneath his back. It matched the tingling in his hands from holding the machine gun. He lifted the radio to his mouth. “Then we'll have to go out after them, and keep on going until they give us back our town.”